104 PANTHEISM AND THE VEDANTA. [CHAP. VI.

Saved, indeed ! but at what cost ? A transcendent God and imma-
nent, too, but only in things which man in his wisdom may choose to
consider good !—a complete go-by being given to the logically consist-
ent, philosophic and scientific position, that there can be no conceiv-
able place or object, where God is not. It is forgotten that if there
be any such. place or object, God cannot be an Absolute Immanent
God; He would become isolated in such. a case and, therefore,
necessarily a limited God. The reasoning of the Pantheist is considered
<c a narrow rationalising logic,^ and the two ideas of Immanence
and Transcendence, though obviously contradictory, when thus mewed,
have become acceptable to Christian Philosophers. An outside
Ood has thus saved them,, it is supposed, from the charge of
Pantheism.

But, if we say that Brahma is immanent everywhere, and, that
there is no place or object where it is not, is our system a Pantheism,
in the anti-theistic sense of the term ? From the most ancient times
what the Veddnta has maintained is that, while Brahma is immanent
everywhere, the universe that it manifests on itself occupies but a
portion of it, so to speak. In the Purusha Sukta^ of the Rig Veda,
(X. 90) it is said :—Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes,
a thousand feet; He compasses the earth on every side and stands
ten fingers9 'breadth 'beyond. . . . Such is his greatness, and
Purusha is more than this: one quarter of him is all existing things,
three quarters that which is immortal in the sky.

In this view, it is rather the universe that is immanent in Brahma ;

to use St. Augustine's mode of expression, the universe is bounded in
Brahma and Brahma bounded nowhere.

There is no logical inconsistency in the Hindu, conception. When
once it is admitted that the eternal being is a spirit with. complete
freedom in its manifestations, the two ideas of Transcendence and
Immanence are quite compatible in the same being. Its manifes-
tations are on itself, and, not outside it.

1 The italics are the author's; see Gf. also Bhag. Git., X. 42 : " Having
the original text: pervaded this whole universe with one
W^ft^^T i ^"^n^f t WOTT^J fragment of Myself, I remain.''

^ %ft fwm ^TS^Tf^ ^TTS^l1 [ NS^TiPK ^W^T Rwt ^ ]

^^?^1T^PTO^^- see this text refen^ ^ ^ Shankar
^KtS^T TOT %F[TH mi^n^r f^ II in his Gloss on Ved. Sutr. I, 1, 26.